I Must Become A LionHearted Girl
by angel-dawes
Summary: Juliet reacts, and tries not to react, following her ordeal in Mr. Yin Presents. Mostly a Jules-centered fic with some inner speculation on Shawn and some Jules/Lassie friendship/comfort.


So, I thought the _Psych _finale was absolutely brilliant, and I was especially moved by the bit with Lassiter and O'Hara at the end so I decided to write a fic detailing her inner mental turmoil following her rescue. It's a bit different from anything I've ever written before, but hopefully it's easy to follow and hopefully it does Juliet justice.

Enjoy! And please review!

P.S. the title is from a lovely _Florence and the Machine_ song.

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**I Must Become A Lion-Hearted Girl**

She was absolutely – positively – _not _going to break down in front of all these people. Not Carlton, not Gus, not the EMT and his annoying _please can you just…_ and _honestly, I'm trying to help,_ his wheedling words and catchphrases she'd heard him utter a thousand times to a thousand uncooperative patients. She was _certainly_ not going to break down in front of the _Chief_, who showed up fifteen minutes after Juliet was safe with a brief hug and a few admittedly touching words.

No, Juliet would bottle. She would shove all of that emotion to the bottom of her stomach where it would sit like a bad dinner until she finally got home and cried it out, knees hugged to her chest as she slumped onto her couch, or maybe just onto her floor, where her cats would attempt to lick away her sadness while also passively-aggressively demanding food in their kitty-cat way.

That was for the best. That was Professional – _capital P_, Carlton pointed out every other time he said the word – and that was what she was going to do. Tomorrow she would call her parents to cry incoherently, and that would _not_, definitely _not, _be Professional. But it couldn't be helped. She set limits for herself, all those limits and those rules and those guidelines (Uncomfortable With Interoffice Dating, All Right With Psychics If They're Cute, Warmly Detached in All Friendships) that had always helped her get through the day, whether it was here or elsewhere. Crying Incoherently was certainly not a workplace behavior, and that was just the way it was.

Of course, she didn't have a rule for how she was supposed to act after dangling from a building, but that was okay. That was _all right_. She would make one. She just had to stop _thinking_ about it, stop envisioning how her body would look exploded like a ripe tomato (did bodies do that? Or was that just a Hollywood thing? She couldn't remember at the moment). She had to stop thinking about Carlton and Gus arriving _too late_ to save her.

Oh, but…oh _God_, she could see it so clearly. The Chief had already regaled her with the Tale of the Abrupt Exit of Carlton Lassiter (and Trusty Sidekick Burton Guster), and Juliet had gotten a certain amount of satisfaction from the fact that he had so blatantly and openly defied the Chief to save her instead of looking for Abigail (she was only human, and she was allowed to be _a little_ petty). But it was _so easy_ to imagine Carlton and Gus pulling up outside, jumping out of the car, only to see _her_ splattered in _the _most ridiculous position possible – tied to a chair, ass in the air, face splattered in a thousand different directions – impossibly and irrevocably _dead._

Carlton had refused to let her look at the clock at first, because he didn't want her to know how close she'd been to eating pavement, but she had looked as soon as his back was turned. She saw and wanted to scream, wanted to tear her hair out and sob brokenly to the starry night sky as it faded into morning light. She wanted to take Mr. Yin by his stupid shrouded face and beat him against a really hard surface until he finally _understood_ how much _pain_ she felt in her stomach where that Bad Dinner was beginning to rumble and come back up (she knew she needed to think of a more elegant metaphor, because it was so very UnProfessional, so very _Shawn_, which made her feel more nauseas).

Shawn called Gus and asked to talk to her, but Juliet refused as politely as she could. She knew that Shawn would wonder, would think: _is it because_? She would call him tomorrow and tell him that _of course it wasn't_, because really it wasn't. She was Professional. She _told _him to go after Abigail. And, anyway, Shawn had taken a pretty far back seat (Stretch Limo far) to the more important problem that was facing her.

Namely: the fact that she almost died.

Emotions dwarfed in comparison to the cold hard reality of life-or-death, and actually it was strange how things sort of snapped into focus.

Namely: why had she been such a _little girl_ about Shawn, and how could she get herself to stop?

That was easy: Make a Rule. Compartmentalize. Box her emotions and put them in her metaphorical cubby like she always did. It was _easy _to deal with things when she knew she could just slide them into their place when they were no longer relevant. And that had always been a big part of her dynamic with Shawn. It was _fun_ and it was _light_ and it was _uncomplicated_, and she could slide it away at the end of the day and be done with it. She could go home, curl up in front of the TV, and ogle Christopher Meloni, Adam Baldwin, David Boreanez, Thomas Gibson, Tahmoh Penikett (she had a thing about _cops _and _F.B.I. agents_, didn't she?) and not even think about Shawn at all, not even once. But lately he had been oozing into other areas of her life, and that was when _feelings_ turned into _liabilities_.

Juliet was the master of avoiding discomfort. Situational discomfort, that was okay. Undercover work was a prime example. But real life emotional discomfort was more than that. It was – Unavoidable? Inevitable? Annoying? – impossible to deal with. Impossible to rationalize.

She'd heard during one of her blind TV watching marathons – she watched the show, followed the story, but often couldn't remember a single thing an hour later due to sheer _exhaustion_ – a character describe a relationship by saying things like "don't inflate the stock before you dump it", and Juliet had reacted with amused horror as was undoubtedly the writer's intention. But it _fit_, now, and she figured the amused horror could wait because _she had almost died_, and that entitled her to pettiness _and _bitchiness and she intended to cash in on both.

She maybe wasn't making sense, but the important part was that this had to stop. She was a _cop_. Not a college co-ed, not someone who was inexperienced and unversed in the complicated ways of relationships. Shawn was great, but required Serious Thought and the Weighing of Options, and a bunch of other capitalized rules that she lived her life by. Things were different now, and they would _stay _different, and she would adapt as she always had into _someone better_.

She felt a sniffle coming on and looked up into the sky. _Do Not Cry_ (Capitalization and Italics meant that it was Really Important). The EMT was still bugging her, still trying to pressure her into going to the hospital, even though she had incredulously explained to him _a thousand times_ that there was no physical damage and he should just _seriously fuck off_, (but she didn't say that, because that would draw attention, and it was not Professional, so her Strongly Worded Deflections were more like whimpers and crossed arms over her chest like a barrier).

But then there was Carlton, approaching quickly, and her emotions did a nosedive because it was impossible not to wonder things like, _how would he have reacted if he saw me lying dead?_ and _I wonder if he would have liked his next partner as much as he likes me, because I know he likes me even though he pretends not to, because I could just hear how scared he was to lose me_, and, _he's going to say something really nice, and you're going to cry in front of everyone_, which was worse even than picturing his horror at the sight of her mutilated corpse (she imagined he would deny it, would keep saying "it might not be her" until DNA confirmed it, because he would be In Denial, and then maybe he would go home and sob to an empty apartment, or that framed picture she gave him of the two of them for his birthday that she knows he keeps in his front hallway because she _saw _it before he managed to hide it so he could pretend he didn't care. It was a dramatic fantasy and an unlikely one, but she liked it).

She crossed her arms tighter like preparing for the inevitable blow of emotions, but the EMT just kept _talking_, and she wanted him gone so very far from her. On the other end of the world if at all possible. So she waved her arms, flung her hands out to ward him off, and Carlton grabbed him by the back of the jacket and pulled him away, just like she hoped he would. The EMT walked off, trying to look Professional, but scared of Carlton's growled wrath. But Juliet had other concerns, and she quickly turned her attentions to making sure that Carlton knew she was _fine_.

"I'm fine. I'm _fine_. I'm fine! _I'm fine_."

There were so many ways to say two words (three, technically, but who was counting? Other than Juliet, of course) and she ran through them all. Her arms flopped uselessly, and she was _so _aware of how ridiculous they felt. Carlton was trying but not _really _trying to grasp her elbow, his hand ready to steady her when she needed it.

And it was maybe _that _which made her Bad Dinner come hurtling back up through her esophagus in the form of _seriously heavy machinery_ (machinery being tears and sobs and other accessories that Crying likes to bring with it). She fought it, though. She fought it Tooth and Nail and Willpower.

But he was saying things like _it's okay_ and _you're okay_ and _Juliet, it's okay if you're not okay_, and – and, oh God, he said _Juliet_ and not _O'Hara_, and that meant it was Serious Business, it was _personal_, and not even Carlton Lassiter was bothering to be Professional. She avoided his gaze, avoided his gaze, but when the full enormity of the use of _Juliet_ hit her, she looked up into his eyes, into his face. Saw his brows drawn together, saw his big sad eyes wide and yet hard, soft and welcoming but steely and _rigid_, because he knew she didn't need a _best friend forever_ or a joking buddy. She needed a Pillar of Strength. She needed not Carlton her partner, but _Lassiter_ her partner, and even though the distinction didn't make sense, it did to _her_.

And then there was this short moment of total _silence_, and she realized with utter relief that they were alone. He had somehow emptied the clock tower of _everyone_ without her noticing. He knew that Professional was something she aspired to be, and even though no one would have judged her, would have faulted her, for breaking down after what she went through, she was still immeasurably glad that no one had to see her.

It was a silence that lasted less than a heartbeat, but it was long enough. She broke under that silence, under the promise of _Aloneness_ and _Solitude _and the strength that Carlton was offering with his ready-to-steady hand at her elbow and calm rigidity in his eyes.

She broke, broke down into sobs that came out like dry heaves after her Bad Dinner (and inelegant was okay, she realized, because the whole situation was just fucking inelegant, wasn't it?). And suddenly it didn't matter that it wasn't Professional. It didn't matter that _she _had been unProfessional or that she felt this weight on her chest to _change_ and be _better_ at everything she did. It didn't even matter that Carlton was tossing aside his sacred, beloved Professionalism like a useless piece of junk and clinging to her tightly, and kissing the top of her head, and saying things like _I'm here now_ and _you're okay, Juliet_ and _Juliet, Juliet, it's okay_ (she liked that he said her name, because it was soothing, because it was so _different_, and she _needed_ different).

And all those labels, all those boxes, all those little compartments just came flooding out to make a mess of repressed emotion that she sobbed out into the dewy morning air as her fingers clutched uselessly at Carlton's jacket. And even though she _liked_ her order and she _liked _that imaginary little cubby in which she stored her priorities and her labels for things, emotions, memories…even though all that stuff was going to have to get packed up and put back into imaginary mental boxes once she finished crying or Carlton got tired of waiting (he wouldn't though, and she knew it), for the time being she was content, even _relieved_, to just _be_.


End file.
